Help me for a TWH Paladin Build

[Chelios]

I'll start like this:

Paladin Lv 1 Human

Traits: Ancestral Weapon (cold iron Falchion), ?

STR: 19 DEX: 12 CON: 14 INT: 12 WIS: 7 CHA: 15

Feats: Power Attack, Fey Founding

What is the best to way to go untill lv 20 for feats (not horse bond)?
Is there something cool with eldritch heritage to build around?

[avr]

Best way? There's more than one. More than ten, probably.

You might consider Oath of Vengeance as an upgrade to the standard paladin, assuming you don't overrate channeling on a paladin.

For feats you might look at something like this. This isn't the one and only best list as I said.

1: Power Attack, Fey Founding
3: Greater Mercy
5: Martial Focus
7: Cut from the Air
9: Smash from the Air
11: Improved Critical
13: Ultimate Mercy
15: Critical Focus
17: Staggering Critical
19: Stunning Critical

This takes advantage of the high crit range of your weapon and improves your lay on hands still further, while giving you the ability to stop some ranged attacks and allowing you to raise the dead from 13th level. If you get a keen weapon then you might swap Improved Critical for Weapon Material Mastery.

Eldritch heritage - if you want to go that way then the Orc or Stormborn bloodlines could be fun.

[Castilonium]

Instead of human, go with demon-spawn tiefling for a FCB that gives +1 self-healing with LoH, +1 natural armor, a bite attack, and way more interesting flavor.

For eldritch heritage go with abyssal bloodline and get a bloodline familiar with an archetype of your choice. Then improved eldritch heritage will give you a bonus to strength. And since it's abyssal, even MORE interesting flavor.

[master_marshmallow]

Castilonium wrote:

Instead of human, go with demon-spawn tiefling for a FCB that gives +1 self-healing with LoH, +1 natural armor, a bite attack, and way more interesting flavor.

For eldritch heritage go with abyssal bloodline and get a bloodline familiar with an archetype of your choice. Then improved eldritch heritage will give you a bonus to strength. And since it's abyssal, even MORE interesting flavor.

This can be useful, but playing a tiefling can have its disadvantages.

You can go with Mostly Human, and still play a "human" while actually playing the tiefling race, nabbing all the Favored Class benefits.

But staying human isn't bad either. If you wanna go Eldritch Heritage, I suggest looking at the Orc Bloodline, as it gives you a very nice intimidate and STR boost.

For traits, I'll always recommend Extremely Fashionable, since it gives a +1 on both Diplomacy and Intimidate and gives you Intimidate as a class skill. Seeker is also nice for Perception.

Buying into a 17 for STR is a waste of resources, imo, you are better off evening those stats out a little, I may even recommend a 13 INT for access to Unsanctioned Knowledge later on, which can get you some amazing spells like Bladed Dash, Haste, and Dimension Door. The latter opens up the Dimensional Agility feat chain which is your best and one of the only ways to get "pounce."

Buying in a 16 12 14 13 8 15 gives you everything you'll need, and you can expect to put your ability score buffs into CHA, since it's an odd number. Your STR will be the same to start, but your Will saves will be one higher and that matters.

The nodachi is superior in almost all ways to the falchion, fyi. With it, you could even go a silly route and carry around a shield with Shield Focus and Shield Brace, and be nigh untouchable. It's also cheaper.

You have to decide what route you want to go in, since you are taking Fey Foundling, it seems you want to be a damage soak, so the shield route may not be ideal. Enemies need to want to hit you and becoming a power turtle doesn't incentivise that.

Figure out your role to the group, seems primary damage dealer, party face, and meat shield are the roles your build is going for. AVR's build upthread isn't bad, but you may want to consider more utility options over going all out with a critical build. I like Furious Focus, but no one else on the internet does.

[chaoseffect]

To be honest a strength based two handing build literally only needs Power Attack. That is the entire build. Anything else is just extra. What would you like to do besides beating people to death? With that in mind we can maybe help you come up with some cool stuff. Variant Multiclassing could be very nice for this (http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/unchained/skillsAndOptions/variantMulti classing.html) as you can afford the feat loss.

[SmiloDan]

If you want the paladin to be super tough through swift-action channeling, go VMC Cavalier, Oath of the Star, to add half your Cavalier level to Channel Energy (15d6+30 at 20th level).

If you can use 3rd party feats, Mystical Healing is great! It gives a scaling bonus to healing that synergizes with Fey Foundling, so you can get 19d6+38 healing as a swift action at 20th. But even at lower levels, it's great. For example, around 8th level, you'll be channeling 7d6+14 or 8d6+16. Basically, you'll be able to heal practically as fast as you take damage.

1. Fey Foundling, Power Attack
3. VMC-Cavalier
5. Mystical Healing
7. VMC
9. Selective Channeling
11. VMC
13. Swift Channeling
15. VMC
17. Vital Strike
19. VMC

[HWalsh]

Chelios wrote:

I'll start like this:

Paladin Lv 1 Human

Traits: Ancestral Weapon (cold iron Falchion), ?

STR: 19 DEX: 12 CON: 14 INT: 12 WIS: 7 CHA: 15

Feats: Power Attack, Fey Founding

What is the best to way to go untill lv 20 for feats (not horse bond)?
Is there something cool with eldritch heritage to build around?

If I may offer a suggestion?

Drop Strength to an 18 raise Charisma to a 16.

Don't worry about the Ancestral Weapon - Instead grab Magical Knack: Paladin.

So you'd be looking at:

Str: 18
Dex: 12
Con: 14
Int: 12
Wis: 7
Cha: 16

Honestly, with Int 12 and Human you're going to be getting 4 skills per level, which ain't bad, and prolly more than you need.

Feats:
Fey Foundling and Power Attack at level 1 are Solid.

My recommended feat path (and why):

Human - Fey Foundling
1st - Power Attack

3rd - Greater Mercy (this is AMAZING)

4th: Raise Charisma to 17, Drop your +2 Belt into Strength
This will give you a 20 Strength, and an 17 Charisma - You now have 5 Lay on Hands per day at 3d6 without a Mercy, or 3d6+6 for yourself.

5th - Weapon Focus (Falchion)

7th - Extra Lay on Hands - I know, you're wondering why this is here, but all will become clear -

8th: Bump Charisma, make sure you have your 2nd +2 item (Headband) on Charisma and... Strength 21, Charisma 19

9th - We're lucky we got Charisma to 19 and took Extra Lay on Hands because of the following reason: You now can take Ultimate Mercy. Because of the Level you have 4 LoH, the Charisma gives you 4 more for 8, and Extra LoH is the 10 you need in case you need to raise someone from the dead without an expensive material component. A temporary negative level is a small price to pay.

10th - Things get fun now, your build is rock solid for the rest of the game, you are the total package... If you have had the chance, by the way, to pick up a Bracer of the Merciful Knight at this point you also Lay on Hands 13 times per day for a whopping 8d6 without a mercy, or 8d6+16 to yourself... As a swift action... That is an average of 44 HP per use. At 10th level you have an average (with your Con) of 66 HP. You'll theoretically heal yourself 2/3 of your HP every time you do it. If someone manages to somehow knock you down, you'll have Heroes Defiance (Paladin Spell, level 1) to instantly heal you for 9d6+18, that's 49-50 HP... You're an amazing damage sponge.

11th - I recommend here, if you want to jump your melee damage, looking into some of the fun things you can do with the Martial Focus feat. This only adds +1 damage, but now opens up Weapon Mastery feats. Or, alternatively, if you want to get cheeky you could take Channel Surge... Drop 2 uses of LoH as a Full Round action and you increase your healing by 50% This averages 75 Healing per shot... From near-death to full in 1 combat round... But, full action bad... So Martial Focus is my call.

12th: Strength all the way!

13th - Cut from the Air - This feat is just fun. Now you can stop ranged attacks before they get to you.

15th - Smash from the Air - Now you can cut BIGGER things, like boulders... This is amazing when you are fighting large sized creatures that throw boulders... Also, you can use this to stop SPELL ATTACKS that require touch attack rolls. That's right, you can deflect those touch attack spells that are the bane of your heavily armored existence. Nice.

16th: Strength!

17th - Difficult Swings - Oh geeze, now the area you are swinging in is difficult terrain when full attacking. You're beyond golden. No more 5ft steps by enemies. You could have gotten this earlier, but the others are so good.

19th - Seriously what more do you need? You're already a Juggernaut with the ability to eat damage for breakfast and heal yourself even from death at this point... I mean, you've got (if you have +6'ed your charisma) like a Charisma of 23, at level 19 you have with everything calculated 19 LoH's per day at 12d6+24 without a Mercy... That is an average of 66 HP regaining as a swift action? 13d6+26 if your Hero's Defiance goes off (71-72 HP?) you can stand up on something and full attack, while trapping it there unless it wants to eat an AoO, you hit like a brick... You've got plenty of Smite, not that you need it, you can turn into an Angel, I mean you can even grab the Ragathiel's Wing Spell (I don't recall the name) and get a Fly Speed of 50 and Fire Resistance. Your saves are legendary, and you can stop spell touch attacks, you can slice boulders in half from out of the air, and you can raise the dead!

Anyway, these are my build suggestions and why. Hope they help. :)

[Slim Jim]

Chelios wrote:

I'll start like this:

Paladin Lv 1 Human
Traits: Ancestral Weapon (cold iron Falchion), ?
STR: 19 DEX: 12 CON: 14 INT: 12 WIS: 7 CHA: 15
Feats: Power Attack, Fey Founding

(Note: the Ancestral Weapon trait is not PFS-legal, if you're in that campaign. I assume you're not, because this looks like a 25pt-buy character. Even if not, any trait that saves "tiny" money will be obvious to you as a waste in only a few levels unless your GM's campaign is "total starvation mode". Ditto Rich Parents, etc.)

I'm a little worried by the will-save. Wisdom is the paladin's classic dump stat, but you're only offsetting the penalty with a 15 Cha in a human, for a flat +0 with Divine Grace before considering cleric-like class level bonus.

Quote:

What is the best to way to go untill lv 20 for feats (not horse bond)?

First, I generally never even consider 20th level, because maybe 0.2% of character played from 1st ever get that far. Second, mount, if done right, is very powerful (since you don't have to waste time upgrading its intelligence, and you can summon/dismiss it).

Dex 12 without a mount invariably means "moving 20'/round in heavy armor"...which sucks.

Fey Foundling (and I assume Greater Mercy at 3rd or 5th) is the basis of a strong character, but it can be really optimized by taking a race which increases uses of Lay on Hands (Elf, Gnome, or Halfling); of those, halfling is clearly the best (and especially so if they go mounted).

halfling 25pt (favored class: paladin)
str: 12-
dex: 17+ (raise 4th)
con: 12
int: 10
wis: 7
cha: 18+ (raise 8th+)

traits: Fate's Favored
1. paladin1 (core) Fey Foundling
2. paladin2 (divine grace)
3. rogue1 (weapon finesse), Accomplished Sneak Attacker
4. rogue2 (combat trick: Two Weapon Fighting)
5. rogue3 (finesse Kukri) Piranha Strike
6. paladin3
7. paladin4 Greater Mercy
8. paladin5 (mount)
9. paladin6 Boon Companion
10 ...etc.